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| What Defines a Modern Warrior? | What Defines a Modern Warrior? |
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| This is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. | This is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. |
| Turning Point: Thousands enter Syria to join ISIS despite global counterterrorism efforts. | Turning Point: Thousands enter Syria to join ISIS despite global counterterrorism efforts. |
| For the past several years, Ashley Gilbertson has photographed the bedrooms of the dead. Specifically, the bedrooms of participants in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; bedrooms in the United States, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and France. Some parents of the fallen keep their children’s personal effects just as they were when they left, and that’s what Gilbertson captures. In one we see hockey sticks and a flag for the Toronto Maple Leafs. In another, a stuffed dolphin hangs by a bookshelf stacked with little plastic angels. They’re photographs of an absence — the quiet revelations of the character of a service member who will never return — and they’re photographs of a wound that does not heal — a family’s grief preserved in physical form. | For the past several years, Ashley Gilbertson has photographed the bedrooms of the dead. Specifically, the bedrooms of participants in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; bedrooms in the United States, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and France. Some parents of the fallen keep their children’s personal effects just as they were when they left, and that’s what Gilbertson captures. In one we see hockey sticks and a flag for the Toronto Maple Leafs. In another, a stuffed dolphin hangs by a bookshelf stacked with little plastic angels. They’re photographs of an absence — the quiet revelations of the character of a service member who will never return — and they’re photographs of a wound that does not heal — a family’s grief preserved in physical form. |
| Gilbertson says he wanted viewers to feel that the recent dead “weren’t just names and ranks of people who had died in a foreign place,” and he is unsettlingly successful in that aim. Looking at his work feels uncomfortably transgressive, an intimate glimpse at unbearable pain. The lovingly kept spaces remind me of the inscription on the gravestone of a British soldier from World War I: “If love could have saved him, he would not have died.” And yet, stranger than the photographs themselves is the mere fact of their necessity, that we must be reminded that our military dead are more than just names. And it seems to me that the defining feature of our modern wars is not any kind of technological change — no matter how startling the deployment of drones is, or the use of social media by combatants — but rather the degree to which the average citizen of a Western democracy has been able to divorce himself from responsibility for wars waged on his behalf, and with his tax dollars. | Gilbertson says he wanted viewers to feel that the recent dead “weren’t just names and ranks of people who had died in a foreign place,” and he is unsettlingly successful in that aim. Looking at his work feels uncomfortably transgressive, an intimate glimpse at unbearable pain. The lovingly kept spaces remind me of the inscription on the gravestone of a British soldier from World War I: “If love could have saved him, he would not have died.” And yet, stranger than the photographs themselves is the mere fact of their necessity, that we must be reminded that our military dead are more than just names. And it seems to me that the defining feature of our modern wars is not any kind of technological change — no matter how startling the deployment of drones is, or the use of social media by combatants — but rather the degree to which the average citizen of a Western democracy has been able to divorce himself from responsibility for wars waged on his behalf, and with his tax dollars. |
| When I was in Iraq, in 2007, I worried that people in the United States weren’t paying any attention to our wars, and coming home did little to assuage my fears. I remember getting a phone call at a bar in Brooklyn telling me that someone I knew had been shot in Afghanistan. The information made the scene before me feel somehow obscene. I knew the political decisions made at home ultimately determined whether people lived or died in Iraq, and yet America seemed so utterly disconnected from overseas. I was part of what Andrew Bacevich calls the “1 percent army,” America’s all-volunteer force. At that time, that’s what seemed to explain my feeling of dislocation, and I had a fantasy that bringing back the draft would solve all our problems. | When I was in Iraq, in 2007, I worried that people in the United States weren’t paying any attention to our wars, and coming home did little to assuage my fears. I remember getting a phone call at a bar in Brooklyn telling me that someone I knew had been shot in Afghanistan. The information made the scene before me feel somehow obscene. I knew the political decisions made at home ultimately determined whether people lived or died in Iraq, and yet America seemed so utterly disconnected from overseas. I was part of what Andrew Bacevich calls the “1 percent army,” America’s all-volunteer force. At that time, that’s what seemed to explain my feeling of dislocation, and I had a fantasy that bringing back the draft would solve all our problems. |
| And yet in retrospect, I can see that my time in Iraq was marked by a fairly vigorous public debate about policy. When Gen. David Petraeus testified before Congress in September 2007 about the outcome of the troop surge, there was a flurry of political grandstanding, with an anti-war organization taking out an inflammatory full-page ad in The New York Times, news networks giving extensive (if often poor) analysis, and various U.S. senators from both parties grilling the architects of U.S. military policy. | And yet in retrospect, I can see that my time in Iraq was marked by a fairly vigorous public debate about policy. When Gen. David Petraeus testified before Congress in September 2007 about the outcome of the troop surge, there was a flurry of political grandstanding, with an anti-war organization taking out an inflammatory full-page ad in The New York Times, news networks giving extensive (if often poor) analysis, and various U.S. senators from both parties grilling the architects of U.S. military policy. |
| The guiding strategy back then was counterinsurgency, which the U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide describes as “the blend of comprehensive civilian and military efforts designed to simultaneously contain insurgency and address its root causes.” Because that was our philosophy, and because we had significant ground forces actually responsible for the various regions of Iraq, the metrics discussed were all related to stability — Petraeus arguing that overall security incidents had declined, civilian deaths were down and Iraqi security forces were stepping up, while senators sharply questioned whether the divisions in Iraqi society would make those gains illusory, or whether the limited achievements the military could provide were worth the extended effort, or whether any of it was making America safer (the general admitted he didn’t know). | The guiding strategy back then was counterinsurgency, which the U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide describes as “the blend of comprehensive civilian and military efforts designed to simultaneously contain insurgency and address its root causes.” Because that was our philosophy, and because we had significant ground forces actually responsible for the various regions of Iraq, the metrics discussed were all related to stability — Petraeus arguing that overall security incidents had declined, civilian deaths were down and Iraqi security forces were stepping up, while senators sharply questioned whether the divisions in Iraqi society would make those gains illusory, or whether the limited achievements the military could provide were worth the extended effort, or whether any of it was making America safer (the general admitted he didn’t know). |
| Those sorts of exchanges seem increasingly rare in the current age: the age of counterterrorism. We don’t send ground troops to hold territory anymore; we send airstrikes or drones or special operations forces to kill or capture our enemies. At best, we put a few advisers on the ground, as we did during the early 1960s in Vietnam. Instead of trying to lift up whole societies, we’ve narrowed our sights to the hunting and killing of our enemies. What was once a tactic within the broader military and civilian efforts that characterized counterinsurgency has now become the whole thing, never mind that it seems to be alienating wide segments of the globe. | Those sorts of exchanges seem increasingly rare in the current age: the age of counterterrorism. We don’t send ground troops to hold territory anymore; we send airstrikes or drones or special operations forces to kill or capture our enemies. At best, we put a few advisers on the ground, as we did during the early 1960s in Vietnam. Instead of trying to lift up whole societies, we’ve narrowed our sights to the hunting and killing of our enemies. What was once a tactic within the broader military and civilian efforts that characterized counterinsurgency has now become the whole thing, never mind that it seems to be alienating wide segments of the globe. |
| It’s not that the lofty goals of counterinsurgency have become any less essential to quelling extremism; it’s just that we’ve realized that we’re either not good enough or not patient enough to achieve them, so why not switch to something we can do? As former Army intelligence officer John Amble has argued, though “engaging vulnerable populations in order to degrade popular support for al-Qaida remains a strategic necessity ... even an extremely generous accounting of our efforts along these lines would deem them a middling success.” | It’s not that the lofty goals of counterinsurgency have become any less essential to quelling extremism; it’s just that we’ve realized that we’re either not good enough or not patient enough to achieve them, so why not switch to something we can do? As former Army intelligence officer John Amble has argued, though “engaging vulnerable populations in order to degrade popular support for al-Qaida remains a strategic necessity ... even an extremely generous accounting of our efforts along these lines would deem them a middling success.” |
| Compare that to the revolutionary change in terms of the tempo of special operations. According to Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady, early in the Iraq War, in April 2004, Joint Special Operations Command conducted fewer than a dozen operations in a month, but by July 2006 the pace had moved up to 250, and with the increasing use of drones our ability to project targeted military power has only increased. Former Lt. Col. John Nagl describes our special operations command as “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.” | Compare that to the revolutionary change in terms of the tempo of special operations. According to Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady, early in the Iraq War, in April 2004, Joint Special Operations Command conducted fewer than a dozen operations in a month, but by July 2006 the pace had moved up to 250, and with the increasing use of drones our ability to project targeted military power has only increased. Former Lt. Col. John Nagl describes our special operations command as “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.” |
| Perhaps even better for politicians, since drones and special-forces raids don’t put troops in the position of holding territory, a mission to kill or capture a target can be marked off as an unqualified success independently of whether it has a positive security impact on the region where it takes place. Our current interventions are less costly (to us); they happen out of the public eye (you can’t embed a journalist with special operations forces, let alone with a drone); and on a pure, case-by-case, targeted-strike-by-targeted-strike basis, they’re better able to deliver their promised results (by killing or capturing highly unpleasant and dangerous people). Seemingly, there’s a lot less to argue about, even as violence and instability spiral out of control. | Perhaps even better for politicians, since drones and special-forces raids don’t put troops in the position of holding territory, a mission to kill or capture a target can be marked off as an unqualified success independently of whether it has a positive security impact on the region where it takes place. Our current interventions are less costly (to us); they happen out of the public eye (you can’t embed a journalist with special operations forces, let alone with a drone); and on a pure, case-by-case, targeted-strike-by-targeted-strike basis, they’re better able to deliver their promised results (by killing or capturing highly unpleasant and dangerous people). Seemingly, there’s a lot less to argue about, even as violence and instability spiral out of control. |
| So the modern warrior operates in a space increasingly isolated from serious public attention. I felt alienated as a member of the fraction of America serving in uniform — and now our military policy is carried out by only a fraction of that fraction. | So the modern warrior operates in a space increasingly isolated from serious public attention. I felt alienated as a member of the fraction of America serving in uniform — and now our military policy is carried out by only a fraction of that fraction. |
| Even more troublesome, the United States is still operating under a decade-old Authorization for the Use of Military Force, and aside from Sens. Tim Kaine and Jeff Flake, who have proposed a new AUMF, Congress has shown little interest in debating a new authorization with less open-ended aims. In arguing for action, Kaine quoted James Madison: “The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates: that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.” And with equally studied care, most members of Congress have considered how a vote on military policy might force them to take a thoughtful stand on a remarkably complex issue that might later become an albatross around their necks, and have vested that question of war right back in the executive. | Even more troublesome, the United States is still operating under a decade-old Authorization for the Use of Military Force, and aside from Sens. Tim Kaine and Jeff Flake, who have proposed a new AUMF, Congress has shown little interest in debating a new authorization with less open-ended aims. In arguing for action, Kaine quoted James Madison: “The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates: that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.” And with equally studied care, most members of Congress have considered how a vote on military policy might force them to take a thoughtful stand on a remarkably complex issue that might later become an albatross around their necks, and have vested that question of war right back in the executive. |
| No wonder the first contentious war-related question in the current U.S. presidential campaign is not about what strategy we should be pursuing in Yemen, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Libya, or Syria, or Pakistan, or the Philippines, or the Horn of Africa, or Nigeria, or ... well, you get the idea. We’ve been busy. It is: Should we have invaded Iraq in 2003? To the service member curious about whether or not his country is serious about its military policy, the answer is clear. | |
| The men and women I served with in 2007 were honestly trying to create a better Iraq, and risked their lives to do it. We experienced tantalizing successes, and allowed ourselves to believe we’d achieved a more durable stability than really existed. The health and security of Iraqi society mattered to us, and it continues to. Many of us formed emotional ties to the place and its people. And many of us came back with a deeply altered relationship to our own citizenship. | The men and women I served with in 2007 were honestly trying to create a better Iraq, and risked their lives to do it. We experienced tantalizing successes, and allowed ourselves to believe we’d achieved a more durable stability than really existed. The health and security of Iraqi society mattered to us, and it continues to. Many of us formed emotional ties to the place and its people. And many of us came back with a deeply altered relationship to our own citizenship. |
| The 18-, 19- or 20-year old who signs up for his country’s military is not in a good position to ensure that, two years later, once he’s done with training and pre-deployment workups, his country will provide him with a well-thought-out military strategy to execute. Ensuring that he has that strategy is a job for all of us. If we make the wrong decision after a period of vigorous public debate, it’s one kind of collective failure. If we make the wrong decision in the absence of any public debate, it’s something different altogether. | The 18-, 19- or 20-year old who signs up for his country’s military is not in a good position to ensure that, two years later, once he’s done with training and pre-deployment workups, his country will provide him with a well-thought-out military strategy to execute. Ensuring that he has that strategy is a job for all of us. If we make the wrong decision after a period of vigorous public debate, it’s one kind of collective failure. If we make the wrong decision in the absence of any public debate, it’s something different altogether. |
| Which brings me to another photograph, one very different from Gilbertson’s. It’s of a truck that was found abandoned on a highway near the Austrian border with Hungary. I saw the image while sitting in a cafe in Vienna. As photographs of stationary trucks on the side of a highway go, this one was fairly dull, with few visual details to latch on to. What impresses it on my mind is nothing about the image itself, but the knowledge that inside the truck were the decomposing bodies of 59 men, eight women and four children, likely Syrian refugees trying to reach Germany. They’d suffocated. When found, their bodies were so decomposed and drenched in bodily fluids that it made identification almost impossible. | |
| This was before the Paris attacks, before it became popular to call such people “potential terrorists.” Naively, I thought the humanitarian response would be clear. Instead, I worried about our ability to deal with the crisis they were fleeing. With so many ways to shield military action from public review, politicians have been relieved of the responsibility to present a coherent vision to the public. Is it any surprise to find that this results in chaos? | This was before the Paris attacks, before it became popular to call such people “potential terrorists.” Naively, I thought the humanitarian response would be clear. Instead, I worried about our ability to deal with the crisis they were fleeing. With so many ways to shield military action from public review, politicians have been relieved of the responsibility to present a coherent vision to the public. Is it any surprise to find that this results in chaos? |
| The policy that has not been forced to withstand public scrutiny is unlikely to withstand the far harsher tests imposed by its practice in reality. And yet this is the state of modern warfare — violence, suffering and a sustained lack of serious moral attention. | The policy that has not been forced to withstand public scrutiny is unlikely to withstand the far harsher tests imposed by its practice in reality. And yet this is the state of modern warfare — violence, suffering and a sustained lack of serious moral attention. |
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